Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday November 09, 2007 @10:44AM
from the feeling-a-touch-insecure dept.

unger814 writes "Sony CEO Howard Stringer says that Blu-ray and HD DVD are currently in a 'stalemate' and is 'playing down the importance of the battle.' Stringer addressed a crowd at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y cultural center Thursday, where he said that 'it was a matter of prestige' which format wins. Stringer pointed to the switch by Paramount from producing movies in both formats to only HD DVD as a turning point. 'We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides,' Stringer said."

We just bought our first HDTV, they then knocked the price of a Toshiba HD DVD player down to $169 if we bought it at the same time. I asked about Blu Ray, the salesman said they'd love to, but they aren't getting the incentives from the factories and wholesalers. Plus, Blu Ray has that awful problem that Beta had in the 80's, license fees that keep the price floor artificially high.

If you remember the VHS/Beta wars, the winning factor really wasn't quality, it was price. You could get the VHS machines cheaper, and the tapes were cheaper. Sony keeps biting their own tail.

If it continues down familiar Sony lines, HD DVD will be the dominant one, and Blu Ray will go the way of the Beta and MD.

You could also get longer tapes, which made a huge difference. And while technically Blu-Ray also has higher capacity, it's too huge to make a real difference to anyone, since they don't record their shows on blu-ray discs anyway.

Neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD "tapes" are cheaper--they are both prohibitive expensive in -R/-RW versions, and movies on both are quite expensive. If you were really paying attention during the VHS/Betamax wars, the real issues were:- availability of rental movies (because there was no retail market for movies at reasonable prices until DVD)- length of recording time (Beta couldn't originally do an hour and a half on a single tape)- other features (VHS integrated a clock for time shifting).

Eh? Where are you getting your numbers? Toshiba is nearing the half million mark with players and the most recent numbers of the Xbox add-on peg sales at 200k through September. And that doesn't include notebook drives. I haven't seen any numbers on how many of those have been shipped, but Toshiba has been talking about a target of 5 million by the end of next year.As for Blu-ray, I haven't seen a figure on the total number of units, but year to date sales reported through September by NPD break 53% hd-d

Yeah, good luck with that. Uncompressed 1080P video is roughly 500GB per hour (assuming 1920*1080 & 3 bytes/pixel @ 24hz). When you find a lossless compressor which can compress that down to 20GB or so, please let me know.

After Sony added the rootkits to their CD-ROMs, I lost trust in them as a company. I figure If I'm one more person who boycotts their blu-ray launch, they might just get a clue how much damage the rootkit did to their customer loyalty.

I'll probably hold the grudge for another five-ish years if they can keep their nose clean.

Sony fucked me on the th-55 first. I died. I sent it in for repairs the fuckers at the repair shop fuck it up. They say its not their fault and refused to honor the warranty. How the fuck can it not be covered? It died, i put it in a box and that is all I did. Some tech at the repair shop fucked it and covered his ass. That's what happened.

The rootkit was the straw that broke the camel's back, though. I bought a Sony home theater system around five years ago. The DVD changer in it broke, so I sent it in for warranty repair. It took months for them to fix it and get it back to me, and when they finally did, it was still broken. They obviously hadn't checked to make sure it was working before sending it back. So I returned it again, and they fixed it that time. Just before the wa

The second issue that I expect to be decisive is that Sony refuses to allow porn on Blu-Ray, HD-DVD does not attempt to restrict the content produced. I don't think that any format is viable if the provider attempts to restrict the content. Even if you don't want porn, how can you be sure Sony won't make some new restriction you do care about?

Ironically, the porn market is ran by some smart people. While I expect that HD-DVD allowing porn WILL be some level of advantage, most porn is already moving onto the internet for digital distribution. I think physical media will remain, only for those people who are either stubborn to adopt new technologies ('course HDTV isn't likely to be in their homes) and people who are simply unable to get broadband internet. Lots of sites do subscriptions at $20-30 per month and have weekly updates (or when you

As tends to happen in most asymmetrical warfare situations, Sony will be turning to terrorism. If HD-DVD really gets a big lead, I would avoid the Electronics section at the local Wal-Mart if I were you.

Now what? Are you going to try to win by unlawful or dishonest tactics? Not sure why you wouldn't try to win on the merits, unless you know that your product isn't as good...

This is very simplistic thinking. The fact is that Toshiba paid Paramount a lot of money to drop Blu-Ray support. Toshiba could pay everyone else to drop Blu-Ray support as well. So maybe you could explain how sticking to being "honest", and relying on the merits of the format would help win here? What an idiotic thing to say.

As usual, it's an idiotic Slashbot simplification - if you don't like the results, pretend it's all about bribery. Paramount was paid for switching to HD-DVD, but it's not the only reason [arstechnica.com]. Paramount does appear to believe HD-DVD is technically a superior system.

Paramount was paid for switching to HD-DVD, but it's not the only reason. Paramount does appear to believe HD-DVD is technically a superior system.

If they believed all that strongly in HD-DVD's technical merits, the switch wouldn't have required grease on the wheels. Additionally, you're citing Panasonic's CTO as to the switch. No matter what the reason was, he's going to tell you it wasn't the money. Even if it was, in fact, the money.

This comes down to greed, pure and simple. Rather than sitting down and coming to a standard acceptable industry-wide, these corporations decided to go it alone and try to beat the other guys in a format war. The result has been market confusion. I heard one NPR analyst estimate that this format war has reduced the market for next-gen DVDs by 90% - in other words, 90% of potential consumers stay away until the war has a clear winner. And there's no end in sight. I hope the format war continues on indefinitely, to teach companies a lesson not to do this in the future.

I agree, ultimately, I think that HD-DVD is probably going to be the winner, but really only because the equipment is less expensive, and seems less prone to manufacturing problems.

I think from the consumer perspective that the formats aren't really different enough to justify two of them. Perhaps if blue ray could offer something compelling that wasn't available in HD-DVD, then they'd have something, but all you get is a bit of extra run time that'll rarely be used and more encryption. Most consumers don't even use all the functionality that regular DVDs provide. Few use the surround sound capabilities that most DVDs have.

I haven't really seen anything which makes me think that one is really better than the other in a significant way.

Blu-ray has, right now, a 50gb to 30gb advantage. That's pretty significant. Blu-ray has the potential for 100gb and hd-dvd might be able to get 50gb. Those extra gigs could be put towards quailty or quanity. Consumers might care, or they might not.

But if you want to point to something that blu-ray has that consumers will care about, it's the Sony catalog. It is huge. And the crown jewel is the entire James Bond collection. Joe Six-pack WILL want to see those on his player.

But if you want to point to something that blu-ray has that consumers will care about, it's the Sony catalog. It is huge. And the crown jewel is the entire James Bond collection. Joe Six-pack WILL want to see those on his player.

Nonsense. The Sony man quite clearly said they were trying to fight the format war on merit, and not by strong-arming people by releasing their Sony-owned movies on BD only, because it's not like that's the reason Sony got into movie production in the first place, so they could ensure they controlled some content, and could make their new formats a success by linking the format to their content.

Sony would never do that! They'd never lie to us, surely? If they're fighting on merit, surely Sony movies

Once content visually looks like the source, more bits aren't going to make it look any differnt. Not having enough bits is a big problem, but having more than enough is just burning capacity.Try making some JPEG exports in the 80-100 quality range, and look at the connection between file size and vistual quality. You'll not that there's a point where a higher quality doesn't look any different, but the file size keeps getting bigger and bigger.

That's interesting. I'm in the same boat with the 90%. Heck, I'm not even willing to buy a HDTV until the format war ends. If more people are like me then this isnt just hurting next-gen dvds but the entire HD industry. Oh well, the faster Sony loses the better.

Of course, the other problem is that the difference between DVD and HDDVD/Bluray is not clear enough.When I first went to buy an HDTV, I was very excited. I got to the store, looked at everything... And then realized: I couldn't tell the difference between the HDTV and regular TV... Both were CRT at the time. I went away very disheartened.

It wasn't until a couple years later that I finally bought an LCD HDTV for gaming, instead of TV, and I was very happy. To this day, I still can't see much differenc

Weird. I have a 46" 1080p HD-TV that I just bought, and the difference between HD channels and regular channels is STUNNING to me. So dramatic, in fact, that I hate going back to 'standard def' TV for those channels I don't have in HD (which, alas, is most of them).

I am not about to pick a horse in this format war just yet (especially not at these prices), so I just replaced my existing DVD player with a cheap "Up-converting" DVD player-Recorder ($100! AND it plays and copies VHS tapes to DVD!)... and my existing DVD collection looks tons better than it ever did on my old TV with my old player.

Now, I can't see much difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, video quality-wise, but the video quality difference between the HD channels and the standard def channels is dramatic, and I could never go back.

To this day, I still can't see much difference between HD and regular TV on my 50" LCD.

If you can't see the different then you don't have an HD signal going to your TV. It's night and day even with the high compression some cable companies do to their signals. Next time football is on look at the standard channel and then switch it to the HD channel, if you still can't see the difference you might need to have your eyes checked;)

> To this day, I still can't see much difference between HD and regular TV on my 50" LCD.

No offence, but you really need to get your eyes checked. I know it sounds mean, but the difference between a 30" SD CRT and a 30" HD CRT is/overwhelmingly/ noticeable, even for SD programming.

I have a 30" HD CRT, and I could tell the difference long before I had any HD programming (I got it specifically for DVDs and future development). My set can do 1080i, and believe me, the difference between even the ju

The fact that you've been modded 5 for this comment is interesting to me, because it probably means that some of the moderators agree with you. Which blows my mind.The difference between HD and SD is light and day. HD-DVD is blatantly superior to DVD, and the different is excruciatingly obvious to myself and any of my friends who watch movies with me (I've even had friends buy a version of a movie on HD-DVD just because they wanted to check it out on my HD setup).

This comes down to greed, pure and simple. This is a foolish statement. It has nothing to do with greed, everything to do with profits. (How can a company be greedy anyway, they are supposed to make as much money as they legally can) How can something like this be modded up. Why do people persist in calling companies greedy, when it makes as much sense as calling your car greedy for oil, or your hat greedy. The fact that you got modded up to 5 only proves that there are a lot of fools that make the same mis

It's greed because instead of being content to try to get the industry to agree on a standard (which would have resulted in a fully functional market, in which everyone makes a fair profit) they decided to try to standardize in their own proprietary formats, resulting in a confused market that people stay away from - and nobody profits. That's greed, by definition.

Oh, I think I can predict who the winner [thepiratebay.org] is. I think the pain threshold is around "put it on when you go to sleep, done when you get home from school/work" which comes out to 30GB/16hrs = 4Mbit sustained. Now we're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. For several years now our main telco has been lying fiber to all new housing, so even if it doesn't happen overnight more and more buildings will be directly linked with fiber. At that point it's really just a question of how much you're willing to pa

In this war, there may not be a winner, but I guarantee the consumers will be the losers. From high priced product ( which may go down in time ) to DRM shens ( Explain to your mom why the new movie she just bought for 30 bucks doesn't work in her 600 dollar player ).

With all the formats out there, they all have one thing in common: they're all unpronounceable words. VHS and DVD. Try pronouncing them. I'm thinking HD DVD will eventually come out on top if the historical track record continues.

If Sony's calling it a stalemate, then HD-DVD is already ahead. If all Sony can manage with it's PR department is to call the situation a "stalemate," then HD-DVD likely ahead in real terms.
Incidentally, I just conducted an informal, non-scientific poll here in the office. Of 20+ people, only two had heard of Blu-Ray. Half had heard of HD-DVD, but almost all were able to figure out what it was by the name alone. It makes me think that HD-DVD has an advantage just because of its name.

You nailed it right on the head. The name recognition alone gives HD-DVD an instant advantage. I think you will see more and more studios switching to HD-DVD, or at least producing on both medias, and not just solely Bluray.

By the way, couldn't they have thought up a better name than Blu-Ray? WTH is a Blu Ray?

If Sony's calling it a stalemate, then HD-DVD is already ahead. If all Sony can manage with it's PR department is to call the situation a "stalemate," then HD-DVD likely ahead in real terms. Incidentally, I just conducted an informal, non-scientific poll here in the office. Of 20+ people, only two had heard of Blu-Ray. Half had heard of HD-DVD, but almost all were able to figure out what it was by the name alone. It makes me think that HD-DVD has an advantage just because of its name.

From all sources Blu-ray is still outselling HD DVD 2:1. Has so for the last 9 months, Blu ray is in a comfortable lead. But sony may have correctly spotted that widespread adoption is hindered by the format war. So While it's 2:1 lead may eventually kill off HD DVD, it will for sure delay the adoption of a HD format. This is likely a preamble to some sort of reconciliation with Toshiba and maybe an attempt to merge and enable hybrid players for the good of the industry.

You see I think Sony has seen the sales figures from the under $100 HD-DVD players. BestBuy sold out and I think Walmart did as well. When Black Friday comes I think HD-DVD players will be back below $100. At that price people will buy them just because they bought an HDTV last Black-Friday. The winner of the format wars will be the first to get below $100. When it reaches that price point it becomes a why not purchase.My guess is that this announcement is to prep us for Sony to start supporting HD-DVD.

Sony just saw HD-DVD camp sell 100k players in a weekend at the $100 pricepoint and more would have been sold if walmart and bestbuys stock didn't deplete. Thats why sony is scared. They will always be more expensive than HD-DVD and rumours are toshiba is going to drop the of their entry level HD-DVD player to $150 for the Xmas season.

If the 2:1 ratio is true, then why would Sony make such statements??? Simple--most Blu-Ray sales are from the PS3. Blu-Ray may have a big lead in outright sales of drive mechanisms, but I doubt many PS3 owners watch more than the occasional Blu-Ray movie... They view the whole ability to play Blu-Ray movies as a "plus" whereas someone who's buying an HD-DVD player is buying it to watch movies.

Works both ways though. Do a search of "HD-DVD player" on Amazon.com and you'll find a huge number of matches - only a handful of which are actually HD-DVD(tm) players. Most are... wait for it... HD DVD players. Note the space, and lack of a (tm). These are DVD players that "support" HD, usually by promoting the same, tired, old up-convert/de-interlace features that already are in every modern HDTV set, and the (commercially unsupported) DivX codec. So while it's obvious what it is from the name, it's not

There is no stalemate, because the "war" is not over. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just, for the most part, dead even in an ongoing race. As they say in Highlander, "There can be only one". As time goes on, prices will come down, and consumers will start to get the itch and start buying whatever brand happens to capture their attention and the scales will tip one way or the other. Soon after that the other technology will slowly fade into the background and a winner will emerge.

These things are still far to expensive. The jump between VHS quality and DVD quality was HUGE!! Not only did you start getting things like director's commentary and deleted scenes, but you got a much more "cinema like" experience. 5.1 dolby (in multiple languages if you need it), 16x9 Aspect ratio etc. etc. etc.

Blu-ray/hddvd don't offer THAT huge of a jump from DVD....certainly not enough of an improvement to justify their [still] astronomical prices, not to mention the limited selection of titles.

I don't even want to buy the disc itself. $30 for a move is outrageous! I prefer not to buy the DVDs until they get to *at least* the sub $15 dollar range. I even find great joy in picking up a DVD for $7.50--the cost of a single movie ticket at the theater!

These things are still far to expensive. The jump between VHS quality and DVD quality was HUGE!! Not only did you start getting things like director's commentary and deleted scenes, but you got a much more "cinema like" experience. 5.1 dolby (in multiple languages if you need it), 16x9 Aspect ratio etc. etc. etc.

Blu-ray/hddvd don't offer THAT huge of a jump from DVD....certainly not enough of an improvement to justify their [still] astronomical prices, not to mention the limited selection of titles.

It depends on your TV. if you have a standard 480i, then no there isn't much of a difference. If you have a 720p or 1080i/p then in fact there is a huge difference. A difference that no one can deny. It's the same or greater as the difference between VHS and DVD in quality. As well the adoption of HDTV's have increased drastically in the past year. So arguements of about few HDTV's no longer hold.

Well, the idea that consumers en masse really want massively more pixels per second being pumped onto their screens is faulty. Broadcasters are taking advantage of digital TV, not to offer stunning hi-def transmissions, but to turn their single channel license into multiple channels. YouTube is by far the most popular video web site, and it offers video quality which would be ashamed next to VHS.This is just one of those behavior driven things -- not consumer behavior driven, but corporate behavior driv

As long as studios are aligning with only one format (Paramount with HD-DVD, Disney with Blu-Ray), it's a war that can't be won, which I guess is pretty much the point Stringer is making. Personally, I'm excited for a high definition format, and would jump at even a $299 player if it actually played all of the titles that were out there. But I, like pretty much every one else, don't want to be saddled with an obsolete and useless box (whet

Well - if Sony PR is calling it a stalemate, thats the equivalent of declaring HD-DVD the winner.

Did anyone expect otherwise though? The statement "Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia" has pretty much been replaced with "Never Get Involved On The Sony Side Of A Format War". Seriously - Betamax, Mini Disc, Memory Stick, A-TRAC - Why would anyone expect Sony to come out aheard this time? They have no idea how to trumpet a format.

This a very unconvincing argument to me. History doesn't necessarily prove that Sony always loses. An equally compelling interpretation is that that the format with more capacity and better library of titles wins. Well that was VHS last time and Blu-Ray this time. VHS allowed an entire feature length movie on one tape and had more of them to offer when it launched. Many people have said that was the key reason that VHS won.

By the way, I don't disagree that the formats you mention failed, but I seem to recall Sony being one of the two developers (with Philips) of this little thing called audio CD. How did that do?:)

Well, I fully expected BR to win because of Sony's PS3 strategy. Sell lots of PS3s, which just happen to be BR players, and you instantly have a huge BR user base. And it worked to some extent, as since PS3 started shipping, BR discs have outsold HD-DVD discs 2-1. But PS3 hasn't sold nearly as well as had been predicted, and a 2-1 selling advantage isn't that big, not nearly enough to kill off HD-DVD. Now, HD-DVD players are being sold for $200 and less (even $99), and BestBuy/Walmart sold 100k HD-DVD p

Despite what Howard Stringer says, it seems obvious that there is much more than just prestige on the line for Sony. Specifically, if Blu-Ray loses to HD-DVD, the PlayStation 3, which is already overly expensive, would lose it's secondary selling point - as a Blu-Ray player. This would be disastrous for Sony, as even more people would choose the 360, which can be made to play HD-DVDs for a relatively small premium over the basic package.

Specifically, if Blu-Ray loses to HD-DVD, the PlayStation 3, which is already overly expensive, would lose it's secondary selling point - as a Blu-Ray player.

Actually, it's even worse. If Blu-Ray loses, Blu-Ray players will stop being manufactured. Sony is relying on economies of scale to drive down the costs of Blu-Ray diodes and drives, which will make it even harder for them to make a profit on the PS3.

In the past 1.5 years they've already lost half the profit they made on the Playstation brand since 1997 (you can check it on their financial reports).

Combine that with the astronomical price cuts they're being forced to do, and you have the recipe for financial disaster at Sony's game division. There may never be a PS4 if things keep going the way they're going now.

I really don't care which format wins. By the time I invest in an HD TV, I fully expect that the hybrid HD-DVD/ Blu-Ray players will be out and that is what I will buy. At that point, anyone who was an early adopter of wither of these technologies will probably pick one of them up as well. It's not like VHS vs Beta as in that case, the formats required tapes that were physically different in size. The discs don't have that limitation.

That way you will enjoy the biggest library of HD content available and if Blu-Ray goes titsup, you still have a console you can play. If HD-DVD goes titsup, though, standalone players will be worthless.

If Sony really wants Blu-Ray to win, it will "bite the bullet" and sell players for $100 and recorders for $200 during the 2007 Christmas holiday shopping season and make up the loss in future volume. Since products have already shipped to stores, they will need to do a rebate. To avoid annoying potential customers, it will need to be an "in store instant rebate". Otherwise most people (these are the people that don't give a damn about technical issues) will buy what is cheapest, and that is now HD-DVD.

Well, knowing the inner workings of studio's accounting methods, everyone has lost vast sums of money, such that the format owners owe them billions of dollars, and only after they've paid up will they start to receive any royalties. Also any movies released for the past 30 years have had their accounting updated to reflect the cost of creating the new hi def discs, such that George Lucas, James Cameron, and Peter Jackson now owe them a combined total of 5 billion US.